


we are the last people standing at the edge of the night

by furtivus



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Fake Character Death, Kinda, bc i love them, but i’m sleep deprived so it’s fine, but only for a little bit, dark!Doctor, don’t worry no cheap tricks riding off bill’s death here, had to get it out before the season finale airs in my country, i wrote this at midnight, most of the characters are only in it briefly, no beta we die like men, sorry fellas this is a Gay Event focussing on my girls, sorry master, thasmin, the master is only there for a bit, this is honestly a bit of a mess, yaz almost gets turned into a cyberman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furtivus/pseuds/furtivus
Summary: the communication unit behind her crackles out a scream and the Doctor’s hearts skip a beat each, because she recognises that voice — halfway across the galaxy Yasmin Khan is screaming, facing imminent death at the hands of the Cybermen, and the Doctor has no way of reaching her in time.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 107





	we are the last people standing at the edge of the night

**Author's Note:**

> hnng it’s 3.40 in the morning i started this at like midnight and got distracted so many times but i needed to post it before the finale airs in australia  
> lyrics are from bastille’s ‘get home’  
> please enjoy

He’s right there, right in front of her, and she doesn’t know when he’s from — has he just escaped the Kasaavin? or just destroyed Gallifrey? or — and it would be so easy to let the rage and anguish bubbling up just beneath the surface spill free, to throw a punch or a kick or a scream, to wrestle him backwards through the Boundary and into the destruction he has wrought upon their home, to make him face the consequences of his actions, to face her _fury_ —

The communication unit behind her crackles out a broken, staticky rendition of a scream and the Doctor’s hearts skip a beat each, because she recognises that cadence, that voice, would recognise it anywhere — halfway across the galaxy Yasmin Khan is screaming, facing imminent death at the hands of the Cybermen, and the Doctor is stuck, rooted in place with no way of reaching her in time.

She surges forwards, fury still brimming molten beneath the surface, and catches the Master’s collar in her fist. He looks halfway between shocked and giddy, like he thinks she might punch him and he’s happy about it.

“How many chances have I given you?” the Doctor hisses, voice low and dangerous, and she sees that glimmer in his eyes fizzle and die. “If I find out you had anything to do with this, I will kill you. No more chances.”

The Doctor steps back, slow and deliberate, and then Ryan’s at her side, almost in front of her, like he’s trying to put himself between her and the Master, who still has something close to a smile painted across his face. Ko Sharmus watches on in silent confusion, and it’s to him that the Doctor directs her attention.

“This communication’s array, it’s all you have?” she asks.

“I have other technology — scraps of the war. But that’s all there is by way of communication.”

“I only need scraps.” The Doctor turns her attention back to the Master and snaps, “Are you going to help, or are you going to run?”

“Think I might sit back and enjoy the show.” That grin, wicked and wild, catlike, _feral_. She’d spit at the ground he stood on if it wouldn’t be so demeaning to her as well.

“Ryan, Ethan, with me. Grab anything I tell you to. Ko Sharmus, you keep monitoring that transmission. You hear anything from them, anything at all, you tell me.”

She turns her back on them, feels the Master’s eyes on her back, his mind grazing her own, and she feels no fear. He won’t make a move yet, she knows.. She’s entertainment, after all.

Yaz steps back as far as she can, feels the bite of the wall, cold hard metal against her back, a chill down her spine. She fights back the tears threatening to choke her, even as the pounding on the door increases, as the metal dents inwards and screams its protests to the assault, as the Cybermen outside tear through their last line of defence.

Through the haze of fear and mania, Yaz feels warmth press against her freezing palm. She looks down — a hand in her own — and her gaze rises to find Graham’s panic-stricken face. He notices her looking, turns to face her, and his expression changes to what is almost a reassuring smile. Yaz chokes out a sob, and reaches out her other hand, slipping it into Ravio’s — the next closest person to her. She doesn’t see the other three humans — the final humans — join hands, but she knows they do.

The metal of the door tears apart with a scream-like screech, and Ashad steps into the room. The human part of his face is twisted into a grin, and Yaz, through tears, tilts her head back and stares him down — defiant to the end.

The comms unit in the centre of the room crackles.

“Yaz?” comes the Doctor’s voice, desperate and terrified. It hurts to hear. “Yaz, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can — run!”

All at once the Cybermen _scream_ , a horrifying, inhumanly-human shrieking noise that grates through their voice modulators and racks Yaz to the core. They all stagger back, away from the comms unit. Hope dares to flare in the pit of Yaz’s stomach.

“Come on!” she shouts, tugging at the hands still clutched tightly in her own. She breaks into a sprint, and a second later the others are hot on her heels — darting around the still-screaming Ashad and out into the corridor beyond.

“What did you do?” Ryan asks, worrying his hands together. His gaze keeps flicking between the Doctor, the modified communications array, and the Master, who stands a good few metres away, content to watch on.

“Sent out a hypersonic signal,” the Doctor says, not looking up from the comms array. She yanks out two wires and plugs them into a piece of a whole different machine, scavenged from one of Ko Sharmus’ tents. “It would have incapacitated the Cybermen long enough for Yaz, Graham and the others to get a good head start.”

“If they’re still alive to run,” the Master drawls, and the Doctor resists every urge screaming for her to throw something at him.

“Why are you still here?” Ryan snaps, and the Master laughs. The Doctor finally raises her gaze to him, and then to Ryan.

“Ignore him. He’ll make a move when he wants to. For now, focus on Yaz and Graham.” She stands up, beckoning Ryan, Ethan, and Ko Sharmus closer. “We need to get to them, and that’s exactly what I’ve modified this array to do.”

“What, it’s a teleporter now?”

“Not quite.” The Doctor smiles, and aims her sonic at the comms array. There’s the initial buzz from the sonic, then a faint echo from the array, and then —

“Clever,” the Master hums, voice low, eyes dark and gleeful, and then the Doctor can’t see him anymore because the TARDIS is materialising around them, responding to the Doctor’s call, the call heard throughout the galaxy.

“Amplified the range,” the Doctor explains quickly as she moves to the centre console. Ryan gives a delighted whoop and throws his arms around the nearest crystal column.

“Never thought I’d be this happy to be back here,” he says, voice muffled against the crystal.

“Right, Ethan, Ko Sharmus, sorry — I didn’t really give you a chance to prepare yourselves. But, uh, welcome to my TARDIS.”

The Doctor throws a quick glance over her shoulder — enough to see the two humans looking about in awe. Ethan is the first to turn his attention back to her.

“What about your friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” the Doctor mutters, looking back to the console.

“Can you track Yaz’s broadcast signal?” Ryan asks, finally prying himself away from the column.

“Already on it.” The Doctor slams a lever down and the TARDIS jolts, sending her occupants staggering. “Come on!” the Doctor shouts, hands working in an attempt to stabilise their flight. “Come on, old girl, please! I know you can do it!”

And she does. It’s rocky and messy and Ryan ends up with a nasty bruise at the base of his spine when he goes stumbling backwards into the console, but they land with the boom of metal and the groan of brakes in the middle of the Cybercarrier.

The Doctor throws open the TARDIS doors and there — not even a hundred metres away, the small group of humans goes running past, almost missing her completely. They’re on a higher level, a series of connected metal walkways acting as an escape from the horde of Cybermen audible down the corridors behind them. It’s only a shattered scream of, “ _Yaz_!” from the Doctor that gets their attention, and when the other woman skids to a stop and looks down at her, she thinks she could cry.

“Doctor!” Yaz calls, and her whole face lights up. “Guys, down here!”

The rest of the little group — the last humans — follow her call, doubling back to catch sight of the Doctor, and the TARDIS behind her.

“Jump down! Come on!” she calls, desperation leaking through the cracks in the mask.

“You heard her! Go!”

The jump isn’t a particularly large one, but Bescot still twists an ankle hitting the ground. Yedlarmi and Ravio are quick to follow, and the Doctor ushers them quickly into the safety of the TARDIS. Graham drops carefully down, and when the Doctor helps him to his feet, he catches her gaze.

“Ryan —”

“Is safe inside. Go, quickly.”

Graham hurries into the TARDIS, and the Doctor turns back to Yaz, who has already pulled herself up and over the railing. She pitches forwards, and they’re so close to being home free — and a metal hand catches her shoulder, almost jerking it from the socket.

Yaz cries out in pain, and the Doctor in fury, and then Ashad is grinning down at her over Yaz’s shoulder. His metal hand still grips her shoulder — his human hand moves to grab her chin, turn her head towards him. She doesn’t hesitate to spit in his face.

“Say goodbye to your little pet, Doctor. I can’t wait to see the look on your face when you see her again.”

“Let her go!” the Doctor roars.

Ashad just laughs.

He yanks Yaz roughly back over the railing and she lashes out, thrashing and clawing and kicking in a desperate hope to pull herself free, but another Cybermen takes her other arm, and then —

She’s lost from view, the only proof she’s still alive her echoing screams.

A Cybermen drops down in front of the Doctor, then another, and another, and she just stands there, just stares, because she promised — she swore to herself and to them that she wouldn’t lose anyone else the way she lost Bill, and now she’s going to lose Yaz, too —

Ryan grabs her round the middle and pulls her back into the TARDIS before the closest Cybermen can grab her, and the doors slam closed in front of them. He’s talking, saying something, but it’s just static, white noise, second to the furious roar of her hearts pounding in her ears.

“Doctor?”

She looks up, gaze cold. Graham stiffens at the look in her eyes. She’s so old. So tired.

“What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to stay here.”

“Doc—”

“No, Ryan! This isn’t one of those times where I say ‘stay’ and you take it to mean ‘follow from a distance’! I mean stay! I told you — _I told you_ — the Cybermen are dangerous, and now Yaz is going to die and it’s all my fault for bringing you here, for thinking I could keep you safe. Now I’m going to destroy them, and you’re going to stay here where it’s safe! If anything happens to me, the TARDIS will take you home.”

She turns on her heel, storms to the doors, throws one open. Behind her Ryan makes a move to follow — not even a particularly stealthy one — and, expression stony, she snaps her fingers. The door slams shut, locks itself with a click. She hears Ryan’s shouting from the other side, hears the doors rattle, and walks away, upon the converging Cybermen, fury in her step and her eyes.

Yaz fights all the way to the conversion machine. She’s pretty proud of that fact. Even as the Cybermen lock her in, she fights against them. At least she doesn’t just lie down and die.

It hits like a punch to the gut at the machine closes in around her, as the last thing she sees of the outside world is Ashad’s grinning face. Her walls crack and she screams — fear and desperation and heartache, because she’s never going to see her family again. Her mum and dad — god, they won’t even know what happened to her. And Sonya, oh, Sonya — she’d been the one to call the police when Yaz ran away — would she call again? Would she think Yaz had hurt herself, like she’d been afraid she would last time? Oh god, Yaz loved them, and she was never going to see them again.

And the Doctor —

She loved her. Yaz would never get the chance to tell her now. Bit hard to as an emotionless shell.

Something in the conversion machine shudders and a spark of pain runs up Yaz’s spine. A scream bursts from her throat, raw and grating and so emotionally charged that fresh tears spring to her eyes. Another shudder and another charge of electricity through her back and _another shattered scream_.

_I love you I love you I love you_ runs through her head and she doesn’t know who it’s aimed at, her parents or her sister or the TARDIS fam or the Doctor or or or —

The front of the conversion machine screeches open and smoke billows out from around Yaz, sending her into a coughing fit, and when her choking finally dies down enough that she can hear other sounds, she makes out the sound of —

Screaming.

The Cybermen are screaming, just like they did earlier when the Doctor did _something_ over the comms system, only much, much worse — because now the screams aren’t just of the robot shells, but of the humans inside, too. Two overlapping voices, one mechanical and one achingly human, both howling their pain. It’s terrifying for Yaz to hear, haunting and tragic and yet — and yet — she can’t find mercy for them. There’s no human left in the monsters.

Yaz looks up —

And sees the reason behind the screaming.

Sees _her_.

The Doctor is coming down the hall leading to the room Yaz finds herself in, sonic glowing gold and whirring at a pitch she can only just hear. There’s fury in the Doctor’s eyes — a cold, ancient fury, and Yaz, disoriented as she is, recognises that broken look on the other woman’s face. She saw it on her own three years prior, when she ran away from home because she thought she had no reason to stay.

The conversion machine whirs and sputters and the shackles finally give up, letting Yaz stumble out into the room of screaming Cybermen just as the Doctor steps through the doorway and —

“Yaz?”

She breaks, hearing her name in the Doctor’s shaky whisper, stumbles forward on legs made of jelly and collapses into stiff arms.

“How did you —?”

“I love you,” Yaz whispers into the Doctor’s collar, and she doesn’t _mean_ it as an answer to the question but, well, it is, isn’t it? She says it again, “ _I love you_ ,” louder this time, and then once more for good measure.

“Yasmin Khan,” comes the Doctor’s voice, impossibly soft and achingly fragile, and then the stiff arms wrap around her, warm and secure and _real_ , and they each melt into the other’s hold.

“You’re alive.” The statement comes as a whisper, almost like she’s afraid to speak too loudly, like the words are something holy.

“I am,” Yaz replies, and for as much as she’s reassuring the Doctor, she’s reassuring herself, too. “The others — ?”

“Safe.” The Doctor rests her cheek on the top of Yaz’s head, feeling her warmth, soaking her in — she’s alive and in her arms, against all odds, and she —

She loves —

The Doctor looks up at the smoking conversion machine, and in her mind’s eye she’s seeing another one — a man breaking free with his love for his son, and here in her arms, a young woman breaking free with her love for —

“We should probably go,” the Doctor says, and Yaz looks up at her through thick eyelashes, and _god_ she’s _beautiful_ — “The Cybermen will upgrade around the sonic soon enough, and I’d rather be aboard the TARDIS and off this ship when it explodes.”

“You rigged the ship to blow?”

“I thought they’d killed you.”

Yaz is silent for a long moment. Slowly, carefully, she raises a hand and rests her palm against the Doctor’s nape. The older woman shudders softly, chills running down her spine. Yaz looks her right in the eye, and it takes a second for the Doctor to realise that she’s pressing her thumb over the artery in her throat. Twin pulses race beneath her thumb, and the Doctor could blame it on adrenaline, or rage, or —

But she doesn’t, because that would be a lie, and Yaz is getting rather good at seeing through those. Neither woman says anything, but they don’t have to. The Doctor can feel Yaz’s mind at the edge of her own — subconsciously reaching outwards, brushing against her, a technicolour of emotion and thought.

She knows what Yaz is going to do the second before she does it.

They both lean in towards the other, gentle fingers finding jaws and cheeks and shoulders, and gentle lips finding each other. They can taste salt in the kiss, and neither one knows who the tears belong to, and neither one really cares.

When the Doctor finally pulls away it’s to the sound of a core reactor blowing, the explosion echoing through the ship. Yaz rocks slightly on her feet, and the Doctor grabs her hand, looping an arm around her waist. Her solemn express splits into something that’s almost a grin and she whispers, voice and eyes a good few centuries younger, “ _Run_!”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and constructive criticism welcome and appreciated


End file.
